Alternate cover image to issue #3 of 'First Wave' series from DC Comics.

By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY

Watch out, crooks, thugs, goons, crime kingpins and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. The Bat-Man is packing heat! And no, the Dark Knight's more common name doesn't contain an erroneous hyphen there.

Writer Brian Azzarello is putting the Batarangs on the shelf, going back to Bruce Wayne's pulp roots of yesteryear and teaming him with fellow hard-boiled heroes The Spirit and Doc Savage in DC Comics' First Wave, in comic shops today.

Azzarello's six-issue limited series, with art by Rags Morales (Identity Crisis), is only the beginning, though — this new/old universe of good guys will spawn even more books, starting next month with a Doc Savage title written by Paul Malmont and Mark Schultz's take on The Spirit. Azzarello has only two rules for this world: no superpowers and no magic.

"Superpowers muddy the waters, at least to me, anyway," says Azzarello, who first started hashing out the idea for First Wave a year ago with DC co-publisher Dan DiDio. DiDio told him that after four years of trying to get the rights to use Doc Savage and some of those other older characters, he finally scored them.

"We started talking about creating a universe where they could all work together. Then it just sort of dawned on me: There are some DC characters who are non-superpowered who would really fit in there well, and then it just started snowballing."

In First Wave, Doc Savage is the alpha hero male who's out to solve the mystery of his father's death, and the shadowy organization known as the Golden Tree reveals itself to be the main group of villains.

"The Golden Tree is a global cabal of wealthy and powerful people (who feel) it's time to do things for the world because the world can't do things for themselves. It's kind of a parental thing: 'I know what's best for you!' " Azzarello says, laughing.

So are The Spirit and this young, cocky and gun-toting Bat-Man cool with Doc Savage being the main man around town?

"I don't think Bat-Man's cool with anything. Spirit's a lot more easygoing," Azzarello says. "The way that we're playing this, Doc is an established character. People know him, and he's world famous. Bruce Wayne is just getting started in this world, and he's got a chip on his shoulder. Bruce Wayne has a problem with authority and he always kind of had, other than his own. That's something we'll be exploring."

Azzarello's take will definitely be different from some of the other recent books that chronicled the Dark Knight's early years. The writer went back all the way to Bob Kane's tales from the 1930s to hash out the Bat-Man he wanted.

"If you read some of those old stories, once these other superpowered characters start appearing in comics, that's when Batman swerves over into that world. He was really coming from a pulp place originally. We're just going in that direction."

The Blackhawks, who first appeared in comics way back in the 1940s, turn up in First Wave as well as Black Canary and pulp hero The Avenger. Azzarello teases that rogues familiar to Batman and Spirit fans may get the neo-noir treatment, too. (His Joker graphic novel put a gritty, realistic spin on the Caped Crusader's grinning arch-nemesis.)

"It's not going to get saturated with all these different characters at first, because we need room to establish who we've got," Azzarello says. "But down the line, yeah, this world will definitely grow. These characters will start inspiring other characters to act like them."

Azzarello first came across Will Eisner's Spirit in Warren magazines in the 1970s, and he'd read Doc Savage books growing up, having been enraptured by James Bama's iconic book covers.

Azzarello's own passion for crime novels originated in high school, and that interest helped inspire his Eisner-winning Vertigo series 100 Bullets, Loveless and other projects soaked in reality.

"I don't remember what the original appeal was," he says. "I think people making mistakes is really interesting. That's what defines us."

He's readying a new Vertigo series with 100 Bullets artist Eduardo Risso, and Azzarello says he'll take on some First Wave spinoffs at some point, but not all of them.

"Doc Savage and the Avenger and Bat-Man and all these characters, they existed before me. I didn't create the sandbox. I'm taking inspiration from these characters' creators, and hopefully some people down the line will be taking mine. I'm just a link in the chain."

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